


The Wrong Kind of Monsters

by concupiscence66



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concupiscence66/pseuds/concupiscence66
Summary: Howard and Vince were both lonely and lost, but when they met... it was actually pretty awful, but stories can always be re-written.  In a world of magic and monsters, there's no reason to settle for just one reality.RedChucks asked for "A second shot at a first kiss" and I went a bit off the rails here.  The story is about... reinvention.  I adore RedChucks, so I hope they forgive the liberties I took with the prompt.
Relationships: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Comments: 23
Kudos: 27
Collections: Bringing Back the Boosh 2020 Fic Exchange





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedChucks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedChucks/gifts).



> It takes a village for me to finish a story! It wouldn't have happened without support from my dear friends: Bluey, Cully and the Stone Ranger. Thank you all for keeping me motivated and writing. And thank you, Chucks, for a great prompt and for being such a good person that it kept me motivated to keep going. I kept thinking, "Chuck deserves a good story!"

Howard watched the little girl with spiky red hair and a studded leather jacket talking to Bollo and wondered if he should intervene.

Wondered if he  _ had _ to intervene. His shift was nearly over, he was a bit peckish, and arguing with a 12-year-old girl felt like it would be a whole situation. A leaving-work-late type of situation. 

Then she stuck her skinny little arm right into Bollo's cage.

"Whoa there!" Howard barked, putting the authority of his nearly eleven months of experience into his tone. "Don't put your arm in there! That is a dangerous, deadly animal. He'll rip your arm off, soon as look at you. Munch it down like an h’ors d'oeuvres _. _ "

He expected the little girl to dart away in fear, but instead she snarled, in a surprisingly deep voice, "Fuck off, dickface."

Certain the child had learned her... his?... well. At any rate, certain that a lesson had been learned, Howard promptly left the vicinity of the wretched urchin and walked briskly back to the Keeper Hut. The kid seemed to have things under control, and Howard didn’t get paid enough to get into fights with juvenile delinquents.

And yet Tommy's voice was forever in Howard's head, reminding him of their sacred duty to the animals. Howard’s former mentor had instilled in Howard a respect for the role of the zookeeper as the steward, the caretaker, the... other synonyms for “keeper” of the animals. If Howard let that little girl get her arm ripped off, Bollo would be put down or placed in seclusion. 

Unless, of course, Bob Fossil was able to keep the incident quiet. Then it would just be another day at the Zooniverse (once the blood was washed away). 

Howard pushed aside his hunger, his apathy, and his deep discomfort with confrontation and walked back to where the child was feeding Bollo some kind of gummi candy. As he approached, the child again glared at Howard and bellowed a stream of profanity-laced abuse. Howard pushed through his fear and laid down the law.

"You can listen to me, or I can call Bob Fossil over, and trust me, you don't want to be dealing with Bob Fossil, young... person."

The urchin glared even harder. "The fuck’s he gonna do? Throw me out the zoo? I paid my admission! I got a right to be here, you uptight arsehole!"

"Did you pay your admission?" Howard asked, looking at the bits of leaves and twigs clinging to the urchin, suggesting there might have been more wall-climbing than ticket purchasing involved in their entrance.

Another volley of insults hit Howard like a blast furnace, but the urchin stomped off towards the exit, and Howard headed towards the pub, having earned a bit of relaxation. Things just weren’t the same without Tommy.

xxx

Despite his best efforts to avoid even glancing in the direction of Bollo's cage, Howard continued to run into the angry urchin. Some days, the vile brat screamed abuse the moment he (Howard was pretty sure 'he' was the appropriate pronoun) saw Howard; other times he simply glared with a coldness that was unnerving on such a youthful face. Howard was not accustomed to dealing with problematic customers at the zoo. The Zooniverse rarely had customers, full stop, and the ones who came usually left pretty quickly. The rest were regulars: too high off their tits or clinically mad to have any complaints. The zoo held a certain appeal to the mad and the intoxicated, but Howard preferred not to dwell on that. He liked to do his job and go home. No, not home. To his flat and his six flatmates. That wasn’t home.

Howard did not want to bother with the kid feeding crisps to a gorilla while whispering in earnest, as though the gorilla was his confidante. He barely cared. He was pretty sure Fossil was extending the animal feed with expired cereals. Tommy had been a complete nutter, but at least he cared about the animals and had a clue what they were supposed to be doing at any given moment. Without his presence and guidance, Howard was adrift. Bob Fossil was utterly useless, and he frequently performed provocative dances that left Howard feeling confused in a way he didn't care to examine. 

Howard spent a lot of time coming up with reasons for not shooing the boy out of the zoo that were rooted in logic, practicality, and not at all in cowardice, but eventually he had to draw a line in the sand. 

And that line was drawn when he saw Bollo with a bit of gauzy cloth on his upper lip. Howard wasn't sure what was going on, but he sensed it could not be good. As he walked towards Bollo’s enclosure, the boy put both his skinny arms through the cage. One hand was holding Bollo's lip taut while the other suddenly ripped away the cloth. Bollo howled in pain, running around his cage, bellowing and banging on the bars. The urchin laughed uproariously.

"What do you think you're doing? Do you think it's funny to torture a helpless animal?"

"Torture? It's torture to make a magnificent beast go round looking all scraggly. Just cause you don't care what you look like don't mean Mr. Bollo has to look like a tramp," sneered the kid, looking at Howard like he was something particularly nasty that was clinging to the bottom of his shoe. It was clear the boy was not as young as he appeared, but he was surely too young to have cultivated so much anger and disdain. 

"What are you...?" Howard looked at the cloth and saw wax and hair. "Are you waxing a gorilla? Are you mental? That's it. You have overstayed your welcome, sir."

"Whatcha gonna do, mate? Beat me up? Drag me out the zoo? I'd like to see you try!" the boy yelled, getting far too close to Howard for comfort, his spittle hitting Howard in the chest.

"No," Howard replied with all the calm he could muster. "I'll leave that to Bob Fossil." 

The Zooniverse never had enough money for extravagances such as walkie-talkies (or first aid kits, or proper salaries), but Howard always knew how to summon Bob Fossil.

"Please!" Howard yelled in mock distress. "Put your clothes back on!"

As if by magic, Fossil appeared at his side, breathing heavily and looking moist.

"What's going on here, Moon? I should be taking care of this. Bainbridge put me in charge. He says I'm his good boy, he says... Why are you walking away from me, Moon? I'm not done with... Well, hello there..."

Fossil's tone changed as soon as he noticed the boy next to Bollo, and Howard shuddered at the treacley tone as Fossil moved towards the androgynous youth still clutching Bollo's cage. Howard tried to leave things to Fossil, but he couldn't help glancing back. Fossil was harmless, but the American had a way of being deeply upsetting and Howard wasn’t looking to scar the kid for life. He expected to see the kid snarling at Fossil, preparing to scream his usual vitriol, but instead, he was staring at Howard with an almost wounded look, as though he hadn’t expected Howard to do something so outrageous as to call his supervisor. Bollo had moved in protectively, stroking the boy's hands and making threatening noises at Fossil. Bollo was normally as lethargic and boring as any other animal in the zoo, and it was strange to see him show interest in human activity. Howard knew Bollo's apparent concern for the boy was probably more about his food supply than any warm feelings, but it was kind of sweet that Bollo saw this screeching little hellbeast as something that needed to be protected from a bag of trapped wind like Bob Fossil. It was touching.

And Fossil was touching the intruder, leaning in and stroking the youth's hair while muttering something about butter and lollipops. Howard desperately wanted the intruder to be gone and stay gone, but he looked like a kid, for all his bravado, and Howard couldn't leave him on his own. Not when he was standing still, looking a bit vacant, as Fossil encroached on his space. The kid deserved to be kicked out of the zoo, but no one – absolutely no one – deserved the flirtations of Bob Fossil. 

Howard stared off into the distance, towards the Chameleon boudoir, and yelled, "M'am! What are you...? I can see everything!" 

Fossil was a blue blur as he ran by. Howard automatically looked to the urchin for words of appreciation, but the youth was already applying cold wax between Bollo's eyebrows and telling him not to be such “a big girl's blouse this time”.

Howard was tempted to talk to him, to ask what had just happened and why the kid had reacted so oddly to Fossil, but Howard knew it would just lead to more yelling and abuse.

And if Howard had learned anything from Tommy’s disappearance, it was to not ask questions. 


	2. Chapter 2

Vince listened for the sounds of Leroy heading to work before he bothered to leave his "room." Leroy was a good mate and loads of fun most times, but Vince could hear from his roommate's rumblings that he had a hangover and was extremely grumpy. As Vince's bedroom was actually a fair-sized walk-in closet in Leroy's room, it wasn't easy to give Leroy his space. Vince had learned young to stay out of the way of grumpy and hung-over men. He couldn't imagine Leroy hurting him, but that didn't mean anything. Vince wasn't sure he had much of an imagination anyway. His mum had always accused him of living in a fantasy, just because he could talk to animals. As if knowing what his mum's cats really thought about them and their "squalid flat" was the stuff of daydreams. 

Hearing animals has always been more of a burden than a gift for Vince, but it was different with Bollo. Mr. Bollo made him feel smart and useful. The gorilla was a bit mad, but he really seemed to enjoy Vince's company and hearing about the ways of man, like money, war, and backcombing. 

Every day, Vince promised himself he would not go to the zoo. He promised himself he would go find a proper job and stop sponging off of Leroy, but the siren song of the zoo kept luring him back. Vince felt at ease there. The Zooniverse made him feel… not safe, but something more like safe than Vince could ever remember feeling. He tried to stay away, but his feet kept heading towards the broken gate and a low wall where he could slip in unnoticed. 

It was only a matter of time before he got arrested or worse. He hadn't expected Howard Moon to turn on him like he had the other day. Vince could have sworn they’d been building a bit of a camaraderie. Howard had been turning a blind eye to the comings and goings of Vince and giving him space with Bollo for weeks. He hadn't been ready to have a pervy American sicced on him. Howard had called Fossil off in the end, but the threat was clear. If Vince didn't watch his step, Howard would throw Vince to the metaphorical wolves. Vince knew how to talk to real wolves; the metaphorical ones were much scarier. 

Vince put on a bit of lip gloss and eyeliner and only used a little mousse in his hair. Howard seemed to favor the softer, more feminine styles to the more punk, and Vince wanted to stay on his good side. Howard wasn’t showing any overt interest in Vince yet--he was far too stuffy and worked up about how Vince wasn’t playing by his rules--but Vince could see what was coming a mile away. They way Howard tried not to look at him, the way he was on edge even if Vince wasn’t acting up. Soon enough, it would all come to a head, and there would be no more quiet chats with Mr. Bollo for Vince. 

Someday Vince would go hunting for a job, but today he was going to introduce Mr. Bollo to Adam Ant. He had a feeling Bollo might be disappointed Adam was not actually an ant, but he would go mental for the epaulets. 

xxx 

Vince was not wrong. Bollo was clearly a little let down that Adam Ant was “just another flesh bag," but he admired the striking clothing and immediately requested some face paint. Vince had come prepared. There was little Vince could do to create angles in Bollo's face, but the white block under the eyes and across the nose was easy enough. He was working on a couple of braided extensions (made of his own off-cuts) when he heard Howard's beleaguered sigh behind him. Despite the implied threat, Vince smiled, but he made sure to school his face into a sneer before turning around.

"What now?" he demanded. "Gonna get your boss after me again? I ain’t hurting him. He likes it."

Howard looked at Bollo with a heavy weariness. Vince sometimes wondered if Howard knew the meaning of the word ‘fun.’ He seemed to have been born an old man, if his sorry little mustache was any indication.

"This is a proud animal! He doesn't want to look like some git from MTV, does he?"

The face paint was already sliding down Howard’s face and jacket before Vince realized he’d thrown it. His brain and body never seemed to be on the same page. He couldn't help but laugh at Howard's gobsmacked expression, as he stood with white face paint smeared on his big nose and weak chin and down the front of his uniform. He looked ridiculous and kind of cute.

And he was starting to look genuinely angry. Vince’s stomach twisted in fear.

"What you gonna to do, mate? Call the cops? Get your boss to come harass me a bit? Teach me a lesson about acting like a bender? You think I'm scared of any of you?"

Howard looked strangely pale under his white makeup. Vince couldn't get a handle on Howard Moon. The guy had to be 6'2, but he acted like he didn't even know he was a big guy. Vince appreciated and played on the clear weakness, but he wasn't comfortable with not understanding that weakness. The bits he didn't understand about people had a way of biting him in the arse.

He switched tactics, moving towards Howard to help clean him off, but the bigger man took a defensive step back.

"I'm gonna clean you off, you berk. Stand still!" Vince barked and Howard immediately stilled. Vince took his time wiping away the makeup the best he could, standing closer than needed and enjoying the way Howard tried and failed not to squirm under Vince's attentions. He bit his lip and lowered his eyes for good measure as he wiped at Howard's uniform jacket. When he sneaked a glance at Howard's face, the Northerner was bright red and staring off into the distance. 

"That's the best I can do for the jacket," Vince sighed. "With you still in it, that is."

Vince rested his hand on Howard's hip. Howard jumped back, squealing, "Don't touch me!" and was off like a flash. Vince smiled as he watched the gangly young man make his escape. 

"No, Vince. You precious flower. Howard bossy ballbag."

Vince rolled his eyes and cursed the flush creeping up his cheeks, "I know that, Bollo. Besides, I’m saving myself for Mick Jagger. Now let’s see if we can get some color on your lips. I've got some high-intensity pigment makeup and some non-toxic markers. I reckon we can get something started here."


	3. Chapter 3

Howard did his best to avoid Bollo's cage, but ended up running into his face paint-wielding nemesis at the popcorn kiosk only two days later. 

"What’s happening here?" the boy asked without bothering to look back. "Where's the popcorn, and why’s this place smell like patchouli and weed?"

Howard considered just backing away, but then the boy turned to look at him, his blue eyes seeming to peer into Howard’s soul. He had a face like Peter Pan, deceptively youthful and innocent. The boy was surely some kind of fey creature. He belonged at the zoo.

"C'mon, Howard, you're supposed to work here. You must have some clue what's going on."

Howard was immediately aware that "How do you know my name?" was the wrong response, but he had no clue about the popcorn kiosk, the weed, or anything that was going on at the zoo, and he was genuinely curious about how the boy had learned his name.

Vince rolled his eyes. "Bollo... I mean, Bob Fossil told me, didn't he?"

He could tell the boy was lying, but Howard wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the truth.

"What else did he tell you about me?" 

Vince leered at Howard and bit his lip, the way he'd done while not so much cleaning Howard's uniform as stroking Howard’s chest. Howard felt hot and flustered (and confused and a tad afraid), but he couldn't seem to make himself run away. Vince was a fey creature, indeed. 

"He said you were a ballbag, like everyone else says. But I think you're alright."

Howard wanted to say something, but his vocal chords seemed to freeze up, along with his brain. He couldn't look at the boy, so he stared at what had used to be a popcorn kiosk but now sported a picture of a camel and, indeed, a distinctly new and more exotic aroma. 

"I'm called Vince," the boy nearly purred. 

Howard was a man of the world; he wasn't afraid or upset by the idea of a man loving another man. He tended to think of sex in general as a bit... gross and unhygienic, but there was no reason for him to feel afraid of the way the boy, the young man... the way Vince looked at him. 

And yet he felt terrified. He wished Vince would go back to shouting abuse.

xxx

Howard wasn't sure what to make of the "shaman," Naboo. He looked a bit like one of those Muppet humans. He was strange, a bit off, yet beautiful in his way. He tended to stare straight ahead, silent as the Sphinx. He only spoke to Howard once in his first two weeks.

He'd looked Howard directly in the eyes, something Howard was generally able to avoid with everyone but Vince, but Naboo's dark and fathomless eyes pulled him in like a tractor beam and Howard had stood mesmerized for what felt like an eternity before Naboo spoke. He said:

"You're seeking greatness. You're seeking to be something you aren't, something you could never be. You want to see the world, but you're afraid to leave this zoo. All your bravery, all your drive, your ambition... it was devoured with Tommy in that ocelot pit. Now you're just an empty hull. You're walking, breathing, but you're not really alive are you?"

Howard clenched his hands behind his back to stop them from trembling and forced a shaky guffaw. "What? Are you high?"

Naboo's face went from placid to bright and cheerful for just a moment as he said, "Yeah. I am."

xxx

Vince enjoyed a good chase, but he wasn't quite sure what he'd do with Howard if he caught him. Vince was used to being pursued by men; he had learned to be loud and hard and let them know he wasn't a pushover. Howard was different. He balked at the slightest provocation. He probably wasn't so much scared of Vince as scared of a potentially uncomfortable situation, but it was nice to have a bit of power for once. All he had to do was scowl and Howard would get all skittish.

But when Vince was sweet, Howard would soften. Sometimes he'd blush and his eyes would dart about in a slightly different way from their normal, paranoid pattern. Sometimes they joked around. They tried to talk about music, but Howard had no taste and, for some reason, pretended to enjoy jazz. There was no common ground there, but Vince liked the way Howard winced in pain as Vince explained the genius of Ant Music, and he could tell Howard liked the way Vince dropped to his knees in near anaphylactic shock when Howard had played him something called "Johnny Coal Train". It didn't feel like a romantic movie; it was more like an old timey comedy where the men would yell at each other but cling to one another whenever there was a threat, and the love interest always felt awkwardly tacked on. 

Not that Vince had been allowed any clinging. He was occasionally allowed a touch, but it didn't take much for Howard to back away or take off entirely. Vince wouldn't have minded trading a few favors for hassle-free visits with Bollo, but Howard not only never made a move, he didn't allow Vince to make an offer. He could tell Howard was interested. When Vince oh-so-casually mentioned being seventeen, Howard had looked relieved, then scared, then completely absent for a few days, before coming back to Vince seeming a bit more shy, but also a bit more friendly. Howard would flirt then retreat, probably wrestling with the whole “you look like a girl, but I know you have a cock” thing. Some guys needed to pretend they cared that Vince was a boy, but at the end of the day, they never really cared about anything but getting off. Howard’s hesitation went on for a month before he finally took things to their logical conclusion.

"I was thinking, you know, if you haven't eaten... and if you're hungry, of course, I know you eat candy all day and all night like you're actively in training to take over for Willy Wonka..."

"Get to the point, Howard," Vince snapped playfully. "I can see your skin losing elasticity with age. Have you heard of Oil of Olay?"

"Hunting Olay has been banned in most countries for decades," Howard responded without missing a beat. "The once noble beast, destroyed for its precious oil, so a ponce like you can rub its blubber on your pointy little face..."

"Get the part where you give me food!"

Howard stared at his shoes and talked a lot about food before Vince was able to discern an invitation to dinner.

"What? Like a date?" Vince was joking, but Howard turned bright red, so Vince asked again. "Like a date?"

Howard looked miserable, and Vince liked it. It was a look that suited Howard. Vince liked the idea of a date with Howard, but it felt wrong. Vince would happily manipulate the Northerner day and night, but asking him to spend money was a different story. 

"You don't have to buy me dinner, Howard. There's loads of places we can go here where I can get you off. I don't go all the way, but I don't mind giving you a handjob or a blowie or whatever you're looking for."

Howard looked adorably scandalized, clearly taken aback that Vince hadn't bothered playing the game.

"That's not what... I just thought... You could try eating real food. You might like it. See what rice tastes like before it's been 'Krispied'. Find out where raspberry flavoring comes from. There really is a thing called a raspberry, you know."

Vince smiled at the way Howard was clinging to his date idea. All his instincts said it was a Mistake, but Vince liked the idea of going out with Howard. He’d never been on a date before. 

"Are real raspberries as good as Raspberry Bootlaces?"

"Better," Howard answered with authority. "Because they're sour and full of tiny little seeds that get stuck in your teeth."

"That sounds disgusting."

"Most healthy things are, but they keep you alive."

Vince looked at Howard's slouching frame, bedraggled hair, and shifty eyes. He was the human equivalent of Raisin Bran without the raisins. 

"I guess I can try something healthy. But don't be telling people. I have a reputation, you know."


	4. Chapter 4

Howard spent hours trying to look like he hadn’t put any effort into getting ready. He wasn’t sure what to expect from the date, but he couldn’t stop hearing Vince’s casual offer of sexual favors. It played over and over again in his head, like one of those songs Bob Fossil would sing as he danced.

Howard had given dating a try while in school, but he could never quite get the hang of it. Tommy had tried to offer Howard tips, but they’d been a bit out-of-date. He’d tried styling his hair like Gene Vincent, but his hair had simply collapsed under the weight of the pomade. 

Vince had seemed keen; he’d even looked a tad flustered in a way that seemed like a good sign to Howard. There was an undeniable chemistry when they were joking, playing off one another’s absurd flights of fancy like old friends, but Vince had a wariness about him. Howard was never sure where he really stood. Vince was clearly pretty experienced in the ways of the world, or at least the ways of the bedroom, and Howard wavered between being intimidated and grateful that one of them knew what they were supposed to do if they ever got to that point. Howard felt he had a handle on the mechanics of it all, but he’d never been able to tell how he was supposed to know if the other person wanted to be kissed or have their hand held. Tommy had said, “Trust your instincts,” but Tommy had also said that the only way to calm a llama down was to sing to it. 

And Tommy had been eaten by ocelots.

Xxx

Howard and Vince had agreed on Chinese, but Vince insisted Howard chose the location because, “it’s your money, mate. I’m skint.”

Howard chose a reasonably priced but surprisingly well appointed restaurant near his home. It was a family-run establishment, and the family always went above and beyond

“Oi. Are we crashing a wedding?” Vince asked as he took in the linen tablecloths, with brocade table runners that matched the seat coverings. 

Howard smiled, pleased that Vince appreciated the elegant presentation.

“It’s very casual. They just put a lot of effort into making things look nice.”

“You should give that a try,” Vince teased, poking Howard in the side. “You’re trying to get me to put out, and you didn’t even tuck in your shirt.”

Howard turned red but couldn’t respond, as the owner was heading towards them, greeting Howard like long-lost family rather than an infrequent customer. She was clearly as uncertain of Vince’s gender as Howard had been in the beginning and danced around the issue skillfully as she guided them to a table, referring to Vince as Howard’s “charming companion.”

“Charming companion. Is that code for prostitute?” Vince asked as soon as they were alone, looking both amused and a little embarrassed.

“I think it’s more of a general term that covers everything from mate to girlfriend to high-class paid escort.”

Vince fussed with his hair. “That’s right. I’m a high-class lady of the night.” 

"What do you want to order, Miss High Class? Should we start with some dumplings? Dim sum?"

Vince rolled his eyes and said, "It's your money, big spender."

Howard tried to keep his tone light. "Then let's go all out, try the dumplings AND dim sum."

"Buy all the appetizers you want, I still don't go all the way."

Howard tried to will the blush from his cheeks before casually asking, "Not even if I get the prawn dumplings?"

Vince laughed out loud.

"Prawn? That’s like a tiny lobster. Maybe for real lobster. They got any lobster on this menu?" 

Howard pretended to frantically scan the menu, grateful to be back to a playful dynamic. When they bantered, Howard could feel loose and easy and even manage a bit of flirting without his usual nerves tripping up his tongue.

But it didn't last. Vince veered between sincere appreciation of the food and mocking everything else that caught his eye. 

"Plastic chopsticks, how posh!"

"Tap water served in a wine goblet. Should I put my pinkie up when I drink?"

"Vegetable lo mein not in a cardboard box? I feel like I’m dining with the queen."

Howard tried to maintain the banter, but he was getting irritated at the constant poking. It was destroying the bonhomie of their usual banter.

“I’m a zookeeper, Vince. If you want fine dining, you’ll have to find someone in a more lucrative field.”

“There’s a tea light floating in a glass bowl,” Vince said, pointing at the centerpiece. “Does it get finer than that? Floating fire?”

“It’s nice,” Howard snapped, his embarrassment fueling his annoyance. Vince broke into a zoo daily to talk to a gorilla. Howard hadn’t expected him to look down his nose at a moderately-priced restaurant. “This isn’t some posh establishment. It’s a family-run restaurant, and they make an effort for it to be nice.”

“I bet they make their own fortune cookies instead of buying ‘em in bulk. I bet yours is gonna say, ‘Your charming companion will go through your wallet while you’re sleeping’.”

“That’s enough, Vince.”

“Enough what? Not enough lo mein, that’s for sure. The place me and Leroy go to gives you twice as much noodle without all this leafy stuff…”

“Those are vegetables. It’s vegetable lo mein, and they include vegetables because… it’s vegetable lo mein. Why are you being so…”

“I found a carrot once in my lo mein from the place me and Leroy go. I ate around it, but it was a close call.”

“I’m sorry if the place isn’t up to the standards of you and Leroy…”

“Me and Leroy do have pretty high standards. If one takeaway meal ain’t enough to keep us fed for two days, we do not return to that establishment.”

Vince put his nose in the air with the word ‘establishment,’ and Howard was done. 

“This was a mistake. Let’s… let’s just pretend this never happened.”

“What are you on about?”

Howard dug through his wallet, trying to do the math in his head, but it was hard to think straight. His eyes seemed to be getting watery from the tea lights.

“Let’s just pretend this never happened and go back to how it was…”

“I’m still coming to see Mister… I’m still coming to see Bollo. You can’t stop me.”

“I can stop you, because you have never paid to enter the zoo. Not once. That’s called trespassing. Why don’t you just become a keeper, and then you can see Bollo and have money for vegetableless vegetable lo mein?”

“As if I’m going to get a job as a zookeeper…”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a zookeeper! It’s a noble profession.”

“I’m sure you need some kind of degree to shovel animal dung, and I’m taking a gap year. You know, travel the world and find meself…” 

Howard threw what he was certain was too much money on the table and tried to summon what was left of his composure.

“You can mock it all you want, but I like being a zookeeper, and I like earning a wage, and I like this restaurant, and I am leaving before you completely ruin it for me.”

Howard felt some small satisfaction from Vince’s shocked face. For once, he felt like he’d come out of an interaction with a bit of his dignity intact. He carefully avoided making eye contact with anyone as he darted out of the restaurant, not wanting to have to explain anything about the scene that had just occurred or the silly fantasy that had fueled it. Vince had made it clear what he was interested in, and it had never been Howard. Howard was just an obstacle to be circumvented. 

“Howard! Where are you going?”

Howard walked faster at the sound of Vince’s voice, moving as quickly as he could without actually running and drawing attention to himself. Howard’s loneliness suddenly felt like a crushing weight dragging him down, making it difficult to continue walking.

“Are you mental?” he could hear Vince yelling. “That meal was a week’s rent, and you didn’t even finish it!”

Vince was getting closer, and as he had the small legs of a corgi, that meant he was running. Howard gave up and turned around, bracing for the worst, only to see Vince running towards him with two handfuls of dumplings.

“What are you… Why?”

Vince caught up to Howard and extended a handful of dumplings while shoving one in his own mouth, speaking while chewing. “You cannot let these go to waste. Tiny lobsters died for these.”

Howard automatically took a proffered dumpling and popped it in his mouth. He was furious with Vince, and yet he desperately wanted things to be okay between the two of them. He hadn’t realized how lonely he’d been until he’d started joking around with Vince, and the idea of losing that pale shadow of a friendship was more than Howard could handle at the moment. He felt too raw. He felt flayed. 

Vince shoved another dumpling in his mouth before asking, “Why’d you go all mental in there? A place like that’ll call the cops if you act up. You need to watch yourself.”

“Why did I go mental? Are you actually brain damaged? You’ve done nothing but mock me, my job, the restaurant…”

“Your sorry little mustache…”

Howard turned and started walking, but Vince grabbed his arm and spun him around with surprising strength. 

“C’mon, Howard. We had our little date. Don’t make it… We can still have a good time, right? My room’s more like a closet, but Leroy will give us some privacy for an hour. Two, if you’ve got the stamina. I dunno what you’re hoping for, ‘cuz like I said, I don’t…”

“I’m not hoping for anything! I never asked you for… I never tried to make this about…”

“Course not,” Vince said in an oddly placating tone. “You’ve been a total gentleman, yeah? We had dinner, and we’ll go to my place, and we’ll have a good time, and I’ll keep seeing Mr. Bollo…”

“You don’t have to… I’m not going to stop you from seeing Bollo. You’re the only thing that gets him to show some interest in life. And to stop wanking in front of visitors.”

“He’s bored. He ain’t got telly or… whatever gorillas like.”

“Why do you like Bollo so much? Why do you care so much about…”

Vince took a step forward and put his hands on Howard’s hips. Howard’s heart was in his throat and his fingers were tingling. He wasn’t sure if he was turned on or having a heart attack, but he felt ready to fall into the terrifying feeling.

“Enough gorilla talk. We can be in my flat in ten minutes, if we walk fast.”

It all felt off and wrong, but Vince was biting his lip and looking up at Howard like he was someone to be looked up to. Howard thought about the reasons he should just go home, but then Vince pressed his lips to Howard’s. It was barely a kiss. It was brief and chaste, and Howard felt the numbness in his fingers spread through his whole body, and he asked, “How about if we run?”


	5. Chapter 5

Vince bit his tongue and refused to make any jokes about Howard’s long-legged stride. He didn’t dare set the Northerner off again. Vince wasn’t going to end the night more in debt to Howard than he’d been when it began. He felt anxious just thinking about the money Howard had left on the table. Vince was no innocent, but he’d never been on a proper date before, and it was obvious that he was getting everything wrong. Vince knew how to show his appreciation for some cheap takeaway or some alcopops; he wasn’t sure what was expected after a meal in a real restaurant with floating tea lights. That was romantic. Vince did not know how to do romantic. 

But Howard did romantic. His hair was shiny clean and there must have been a little product in it, defining his curls. His shirt was clean and unwrinkled, his cheeks were freshly shaven, and his little mustache was neatly trimmed. Even his trainers looked new. Someone who didn’t know Howard might not notice the signs he’d made an effort to look nice, but Vince saw every bit of it. 

“You look nice,” Vince offered, doing his best to sound sincere. “And you smell nice. You must have really scrubbed that dung smell off… Sorry. Just meant to say you smell nice.”

Howard blushed and his eyes darted about. 

“Some soap, a loofah, a few gallons of boiling hot water, and several hours hard scrubbing, and the smell of the zoo comes off like a treat.”

Vince laughed and bumped his shoulder into Howard, knocking him off his stride for a moment. Howard paused and cast Vince a furtive look,saying, “You look nice. I like your top. It’s… Everything looks nice. You look nice.”

Vince was mortified by how the tepid compliments set his face burning. He’d dressed for Howard: andro enough to get his interest, but not enough to make people yell at them in the streets. His shirt was a stripy number that always made Howard smile, and he’d paired it with jeans that rode low enough on his hips that Howard kept glancing any time a bit of Vince’s tummy was exposed. Vince impulsively jumped in front of Howard, pulling a few shapes to show off his outfit, being sexy in the kind of over-the-top way that allowed Howard to both laugh and ogle. 

“I’m Vince Noir, Rock’n’Roll star,” Vince announced, using his beloved ‘stage name.’ No one had ever actually put him on a stage yet, but Vince was ready. He’d been born to front a band.

“Is that your name? Noir? It suits you.”

Vince felt a thrill that was not unlike getting away with shoplifting.

“Yeah. Noir. Vince Noir. That’s me.”

Xxx

Leroy wasn’t at home, so Vince hustled Howard past his other snickering flatmates and into Leroy’s room, locking the door behind them. 

“This is your room?” Howard asked, looking at the large Simon and Garfunkel poster over the single bed.

“No, this is Leroy’s room. He’ll pick the lock if he comes home, but he’ll know to leave me alone… Unless he’s really drunk; then there’s no telling what he’ll do. Don’t worry though, we can keep the door blocked.”

Vince guided Howard into his “bedroom.” The mattress on the floor took up most of the space, so Howard had to gingerly step around it to get all the way inside and had to crouch under the shelving. Vince tugged his mattress until it was up against the door. When they got down to business, Vince would have to keep his foot against the door for safety. Leroy was usually good about giving Vince his privacy, but there had been enough times that Leroy had come stumbling into Vince’s space with some drug-related indecent proposal that Vince couldn’t take his chances. If Howard couldn’t say “blowjob,” he probably wouldn’t respond well to Leroy suggesting he and Vince snog in front of Leroy’s dealer in exchange for a couple tabs of E, or asking Vince to let some random guy “feel you up a bit. But not too much, I told him you were a girl” for hash brownies and lager. 

Vince showed Howard the storage bin where he kept his shoes and a variety of odor-eating items.

“When you live in a closet, you really need to control the foot smell,” Vince explained when he saw Howard’s perplexed look. Howard nodded and shoved his trainers in the bin. Howard’s socks looked brand new. Vince smiled at the effort. He’d pegged Howard as the type who only bought new socks when the old ones lacked the structural integrity to still be called a sock.

“So, what’s your stance on David Bowie?” Howard asked, his voice sounding a bit strained. “Pro, anti, indifferent?”

Vince turned on a few more strands of fairy lights, so his Bowie posters were properly illuminated. 

“I’m afraid to ask what you think of Bowie. I might not be able to go through with this if you start trashing my religion here.”

Howard shuffled awkwardly. “I like David Bowie. And Mick Jagger.”

Vince followed Howard’s eyes to his shrine to Jagger and smiled.

Then Howard added, “But don’t ask me about the video for Dancing in the Street…”

Vince slapped a hand over Howard’s mouth before he could speak another sacrilegious word. It was a playful gesture, but it was exciting to feel Howard’s lips against his hand. Vince had messed around with some guys he’d thought were cute and enjoyed the experience, but he’d never really wanted someone the way he wanted Howard. 

Vince expected Howard to be stiff and awkward, and he was, but he was surprisingly eager. There was no pretense of cool. Howard was making desperate little noises as they kissed, trying to feel every part of Vince’s body at once. Vince reflexively shushed him, even though he was certain no one could have snuck into the room without Vince having heard the lock being picked. He normally didn’t worry much about being overheard, but this was different. This felt more real somehow, more important.

Howard was too tall for the space; even lying on his back, he was too tall for the mattress. Vince straddled the Northerner’s hips and pointed out that he looked like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians, and Howard replied he was not up for bondage on the first date. He said it easily, part of the banter. Vince told himself not to read into it. Howard was not implying that there would be more dates. It was just a joke.

Vince laid down on top of Howard, scooting down a bit to push his foot hard against the door. Howard followed suit with one of his considerably larger and more sturdy feet. He looked a bit nervous, but he broke into hysterical giggles when Vince whispered, “Safe sex.”

Vince didn’t dare get Howard naked with a chance of Leroy barging in, but he pushed Howard’s shirt up and his trousers down so he could admire the older boy’s gangly frame. He wasn’t as skinny or as hairy as Vince would have expected, but he looked good. He looked clean in a way that made a johnny seem unnecessary. Howard’s body looked soft and clean and safe. 

Vince grabbed a johnny--he was apparently turning into a sap, but he wasn’t stupid--and used a trick he’d learned at a safe sex seminar that Leroy had dragged him to, sliding the condom onto Howard using his mouth. Howard was thicker and longer than the other guys Vince had tried it on, so it didn’t work as well as he would have liked, but Howard seemed impressed. He was gripping the sheets and gritting his teeth and Vince reckoned he would see every tendon in his lanky body straining for control. Vince did his best to make it last, to make it good. He wanted to make it “dinner-with-multiple-appetizers” good, but Howard was too eager and too inexperienced for it to last long. Howard watched Vince with a look of utter amazement as Vince sucked him off, occasionally stroking Vince’s hair with an absurdly gentle touch. When he came, it was with a mad face and a soft whimper. He continued to watch Vince as he kissed Howard’s stomach and thighs before cleaning him up and disposing of the used condom. Howard was limp as a ragdoll as Vince tucked him back into his pants and made him more or less decent. Vince wasn’t sure what to do at that point, but Howard scooted to the side of the mattress, giving Vince room to join him. The mattress could barely accommodate Howard, so it was a tight fit, but Vince liked the feeling of being squeezed up against Howard. It felt safe. 

Xxx

When Howard was capable of thought again, he immediately jumped to worrying about the ways he might be messing up at that very moment. Vince seemed content to lie curled up to Howard, but he was probably expecting a bit more. Howard gave Vince a hesitant kiss on the lips, but when it was returned eagerly, Howard felt a bit more confident. 

Then he tried to get Vince out of his jeans and found a series of belts and buttons that would have stymied even the great Houdini. Vince laughed and batted Howard’s awkward hands away and fiddled with assorted clasps and snaps until Howard could see a hint of red pants. Howard kissed Vince while he slid his hand inside, feeling Vince’s silky-soft pants. Vince was hard and leaking and immediately began thrusting into Howard’s hand.

“Whoa there,” Howard whispered. “You’ll be done before I get a chance to return the favor.”

Vince looked scandalized, as though Howard’s suggestion was the one thing that he could not take with his usual aplomb. 

“This is fine, I’m not expecting you to… You paid for dinner n’all.”

Vince tucked his face into Howard’s shoulder and began thrusting in earnest. It all seemed a bit mechanical for a first date.

“Vince, I want… I’d like to make this…” Howard couldn’t think of a word that didn’t sound overly sappy.

Vince heaved a playful sigh and gave Howard a kiss.

“You can’t let anything be easy. Not even me.”

Xxx

Vince stared at his ceiling, listening to Howard not quite snoring in his ear. He knew it was past time to get the Northerner out of his flat, but he wasn’t quite ready for the evening to end. For all his obvious inexperience, Howard had been a quick learner. Vince could still almost feel Howard’s prickly mustache in all kinds of places Vince wasn’t used to having a man’s mouth. He’d tried to make things easy for Howard, but Howard had been keen to make an exhaustive study of Vince’s nether regions. He’d gotten a bit nervous while Howard was down there, afraid of the nearly inevitable pleas to “just give it a try” that guys seemed so fond of. Vince had tried putting a finger inside of himself once and it had hurt. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could take a cock in there. 

But it would have been hard to say no if Howard had pushed the issue. There would be no way to keep Howard from getting in the way of Vince seeing Bollo if he were properly angry with Vince. He’d be losing two mates at once, and he didn’t exactly have a lot of dependable mates to begin with.

So he’d gritted his teeth and willed his body to stay relaxed while Howard had kissed and touched him with the kind of freaky thoroughness you could only expect from a 20-year-old who actually enjoyed jazz music. In the end, Howard had only touched him lightly in those private areas before asking for a condom and giving Vince an absolutely mind-blowing blowie. Howard insisted he was not very good at playing the trumpet, but he gave credit to the years of practice for his impressive lung capacity and the fact his mouth and jaw never seemed to get tired. 

When it came to oral sex, Vince was rarely on the receiving end, and he told himself that was why he was feeling all sappy and soft as he clung to Howard. It was just the orgasm and the novelty of the whole situation that was turning him into a total big girl’s blouse who wanted to be held. 

When he heard Leroy cursing at the locked door, he quickly roused the dozing Howard, who turned bright red as he scrambled to get his shoes on. Vince kept his feet against the closet door, wanting to give Howard a moment to compose himself before Leroy burst in on them in the hopes of perving on them. Sure enough, the door to the bedroom had no sooner swung open with a thud than Leroy was banging on the door of Vince’s closet.

“C’mon, Vince! I wanna meet your boyfriend! I wanna see who you spent five hours getting ready for!”

Vince silently plotted how he would kill Leroy as his flatmate slept, avoiding Howard’s eyes as he finally opened the door. 

Leroy stared at Howard, while Howard stared at his shoes and turned every shade of red. 

Leroy let the awkwardness linger far too long before finally breaking the tension.

“I like them light blue trousers. Can I borrow them?”


	6. Chapter 6

Howard could feel every bit of fabric touching his body, reminding him of what he’d done the night before. Of where he’d been touched. Where he’d been kissed and licked. Every time he felt like he had a grip on himself, another memory would send all the blood in his body first to his face and then below his waist. He was desperate to see Vince again, but also terrified. Vince would be Vince, and Howard wasn’t sure he could handle it in his current state. 

When he finally spotted Vince’s porcupine-like hair near Bollo’s cage, Howard couldn’t decide if he should walk towards the pair or run away. So he just stood still. He had no idea how much time went by before Bollo seemed to gesture for Vince to look in Howard’s direction. But of course a gorilla would do no such thing. That would be absurd.

Howard hoped for at least a warm greeting. What he got was an icy stare.

“You said you wouldn’t give me a hard time,” Vince said with a hint of a whine. “You said I could see Bollo.”

Howard managed a nod and a mumbled, “Of course.”

“Why are you staring at me like that? I ain’t done nothing.”

There was something brittle in Vince’s voice that made Howard feel like he needed to stand still and not draw attention to himself. Running away would bring abuse, moving towards Vince would likely bring a different kind of abuse. So Howard stood. Howard felt raw and vulnerable, but he could see an echo of that feeling in Vince’s hostile stare. Vince was a small creature; he had to make himself big and threatening when he was scared.

“I never said you had to buy me dinner or nothing. I didn’t ask you for anyhing.”

“I know,” Howard said softly, trying to imagine how Tommy would have handled an animal as wild and unpredictable as Vince Noir. “I hope you enjoyed it. I… I really enjoyed… spending time with you. Not just… Um. Maybe we can do it again some time.”

“Why?” There was a world of suspicion in Vince’s question, and Howard had no clue why, but he could feel himself slipping into a very rare state. He felt almost… confident.

“I enjoy your company, and I enjoy that restaurant, and I enjoyed not eating alone for once. I didn’t enjoy the part where I left the table abruptly…”

“Ran away like a bitch, you mean.”

“Sauntered off with the cool air of a sophisticated man of the world.”

“You cried like a girl and ran off to write about your feelings in a journal with a unicorn on the front…”

“It’s a pegasus, not a unicorn, and it keeps my secrets safe, flying high above the clouds.”

Howard held Vince’s gaze until the younger man dropped his eyes towards his rather ornate cowboy boots. 

“So we’re still mates?” Vince asked softly. 

Howard nodded and slowly closed the gap between them, getting close but making sure not to crowd Vince or block him in. He knew a thing or two about wild animals. He was a zookeeper after all. 

Xxx

Howard didn’t know what to make of his relationship with Vince. The younger man remained capricious and maddening, but he made Howard laugh, and every once in a while, he shoved Howard in a supply closet or the Keeper Hut and made him orgasm. Vince had put off any further attempts at a proper date, but he seemed to enjoy their sporadic physical intimacy. It was three weeks after their one and only date that Howard found himself holding Vince up against the door of the hut, both of them still panting from their desperate, quiet, and rather messy rutting, when Vince whispered into Howard’s ear.

“I have something I want to tell you, but you can’t be a dick about it.”

Howard nodded, his mind going in a million different directions.

“I can talk to animals. I can understand what they’re saying.”

Howard took a moment to try and clean them both up with a handkerchief before putting Vince back on the ground. His fingertips felt numb. The smaller man was staring at Howard with those unnaturally beautiful blue eyes. Unearthly eyes. The eyes of a person who belonged in the Zooniverse in a way that Howard never could.

“Tommy… Tommy said… Tommy would tell me…” Howard couldn’t say it. He hadn’t let himself think about it in months.

“Who the fuck is Tommy?” Vince asked, looking around as though Tommy might be posing an immediate threat.

“He was my supervisor when I started here. He was… my mentor. But he… fell into the ocelot pit…”

“And they munched him down? What’s he got to do with anything?”

Vince looked angry, and Howard couldn’t bear it. Not for this conversation.

“He said there were monsters and magic and aliens, and…”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Vince asked, looking ready to start running or punching or whatever he needed to do to handle what Howard was trying to tell him.

“This zoo. There are things here that don’t make sense, that don’t happen when I’m outside the zoo. It was different when Tommy was here and he could tell me how to handle things, but now I just have Fossil, and he keeps doing little dance numbers…”

Howard grabbed at his stinging cheek, his brain taking a moment to catch up to the fact he’d been slapped. Vince didn’t look angry, however. Maybe a little concerned.

“Take deep breaths,” Vince ordered. “Feel your big feet on the ground, filling them big ugly shoes.”

Howard followed Vince’s directions, a bit confused, but when he began breathing properly, he realized there was sweat on his brow that had nothing to do with his exertions with Vince a few minutes earlier.

“That’s better,” Vince cooed, stroking Howard’s arms. “Thought you were going to start hyperventilating there. It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid of monsters. At least, not any more afraid of them than other kinds of monsters.”

“It all seemed grand and exciting when Tommy was here, but if they could kill Tommy…”

Howard allowed himself to be pulled into an awkward hug.

“I can handle monsters,” Vince assured him. “Just stick with me, and you’ll be fine. I’ve got the animals on my side and all. I’m like Mowgli in flares.”

Howard laughed and sniffled and clung to Vince’s thin but sturdy frame, breathing in the smell of hairspray and gorilla. He might have worked up the nerve for a Declaration or a Gesture, if Bob Fossil hadn’t chosen that moment to come barreling through the door. 

Howard guiltily pulled down his jacket, but he’d more or less made himself decent while cleaning himself off. There was nothing for Fossil to see.

Bob looked from Howard’s crotch to Vince’s and made no effort to hide his disappointment.

“I heard you two were banging in here. This is not a brothel! Except on Tuesdays when I do rent this place out for a few hours to a handful of respectable prostitutes. Respectable. That means money up front!”

“What do you want?” Howard snapped. “I’m very busy, and I need to get back to… Howard’s mouth went dry, but he thought of lemons and he kept going. This was the opening he’d been waiting for. “… training our new keeper.”

Bob Fossil moved in far too close, going on tip-toe to try and be eye-to-eye with Howard. 

“What are you talking about? I’m the boss here. I don’t know about any new keeper.”

Howard gestured towards Vince, who was casually examining his nails. Ginger Rogers couldn’t follow a lead as well as Vince could. Whatever Howard could do, Vince could do backwards and in heels.

“You remember Vince Noir? He’s got a fancy degree and a keen interest in shoveling dung. And he talks to animals.”

For a moment, Vince looked so wounded that Howard nearly gave up the ruse, but Bob Fossil’s hands were sliding towards his own nipples. He was getting excited.

“He’s going to find out which animals have been spreading that ugly gossip about you, and he is going to put an end to it. Right, Vince?”

Vince quickly snapped back into his cultivated indifference. “I suppose. If I have time between the dung shoveling.”

“Find out who has been telling everyone the story about me and the crab and the lingerie! You find out and you tell me! If that story gets back to my dear, sainted mother, I’ll have to kill her. And then I’ll kill all your moms!” Fossil screamed, before suddenly composing himself and apologizing, explaining he’d meant to say ‘mums’ not ‘moms’ before letting himself out of the Keeper Hut.

Howard swayed on his feet. Fossil was like a human tornado mixed with a Freudian nightmare. 

Vince stood pigeon-toed, fidgeting with his hair, while Howard tried to think of something safe to say. Fortunately, Vince broke the silence.

“Does this mean I have a job?”

“That is almost exactly how I was hired,” Howard explained truthfully. “Only Tommy said I could shoot lasers from my eyes.”

xxx

Having to do a proper job cut into his time with Bollo, but otherwise, Vince was pleased with his new role as paid zookeeper. He got to make money while spending all his time hanging out with Bollo and Howard. He kept waiting for someone to realize that Vince was in no way qualified to do the job for which he’d been hired, but when he expressed those fears to Howard, the older man had sagely explained, “No one is qualified to do anything here. That’s why it’s such a terrible zoo.”

It was a terrible zoo. The cages were small and the animals were grouchy and poorly fed. The Zooniverse was the animal equivalent of living in Leroy’s closet. Vince hadn’t finished school, but he knew a thing or two about being trapped and miserable, and he enjoyed making the animals at least a bit happier by playing them music or giving them makeovers. Howard sighed, but rarely interfered, accepting that Vince understood the needs and wants of the animals better than anyone. Howard had initially been keen to learn all about what the animals had to say, but quickly grew bored with the endless conversations about territory, mating, and food. Animals had simple brains, and Vince was a simple man. The endless refrains of “Everyone needs to back up off of my space/food/mate” were never boring to Vince. When a woman asked Howard for directions to the Lemur Lounge, Vince threw a bucket of seed at her and called Howard a dick before shoving him in a supply closet and giving him a blowie. Howard had called it ‘the behavior of a madman,’ but Tony Toni Tone the Tiger had congratulated Vince on his strength and virility. Howard had never had to fight for food or space. He didn’t understand.

Vince worried about being further in debt to the Northerner, but Howard seemed happy enough with joking around and occasionally getting off. He rarely initiated anything physical between them. He’d make flirty comments, and he seemed eager whenever Vince made a move, but he generally gave Vince space and kept his hands to himself. It was strange and disconcerting. Howard often stuck Vince with the hardest tasks at the zoo, but then he’d take on the most tedious and time-consuming tasks so even that tended to even out at the end of the day. They were a good team. They balanced one another. Vince got so angry he nearly punched a hole in Tony the Prawn’s aquarium just thinking about how bad it would be when it all fell apart. Tony was furious, but what else was new? Vince was nursing his sore hand when he was approached by a tiny man in a turban.

The man silently held out his hand, palm up. Vince stared at the hand until the man spoke.

“Give me your palm, you Fraggle. I haven’t got all day.”

The shaman looked at Vince’s palm and read his fortune.

“I see you facing many obstacles, but overcoming them. A surprising number of obstacles, actually. A horny yeti? That can’t be right,” Naboo twisted Vince’s hand in different directions as though he might have been reading the palm upside down before giving another shrug. “I see you overcoming all these obstacles, because you never forget what’s really important.”

“My hair?” Vince asked, giving it a nervous pat. There was a serious and alarming lack of mirrors in the zoo, and it put Vince on edge.

“Yes. That is part of it,” Naboo agreed. “Never forget that as long as your hair looks good, you are indestructible. You are like Samson. Your hair is your strength, the source of your gifts.”

“Does that mean that if I cut it, I’ll lose everything?” Vince asked nervously. He was due for a trim.

“Course not. You need to keep trimming your hair regularly to prevent breakage. But if you were to cut it off…”

“I’d lose everything?”

“You’d look like a dick until it grew back. Stop being so dramatic,” said the man in ornate shaman’s robes. 

“What does it say about me and Howard? Is he in there?” Vince asked, staring at the lines on his hand, looking for some manner of sign.

“This is your love line. See how it breaks into all these tiny lines? Those are all the ways your story with Howard can end.”

Vince stared hard at his hand. “But how do I know which is the way I should go? Which is the right path?”

Naboo sighed. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Because you’ll still have all these other lines to get through.”

“So… I take all these paths? I thought this was one of those two roads diverge in the woods-type situations.”

Naboo shook his head. “No, your love life is more like a busy roundabout. You just need to keep circling and getting forced into wrong exits until you get to where you need to be.”


	7. Chapter 7

Vince’s first paycheck went to Leroy for rent (and a few hair products). The second paycheck went to more hair products and dinner for two at a nice-ish pub. Howard had been so startled at the invitation to dinner that Vince nearly rescinded the offer, but Howard eventually stammered out that dinner would be “nice.”

It was nice. The place was dark and full of loud and laddish types watching football at the bar, while others ate more quietly at tables. The food was good and the waitress didn’t so much as blink at Vince’s fake ID. He was nearly 18, but aware he still looked a good bit younger. Howard insisted on buying the second round of lagers, and Vince agreed because he wasn’t great with numbers and worried about covering the tab. He also wanted both he and Howard to be good and relaxed for the rest of the evening. 

Howard turned pink when Vince explained that Leroy would be out all night and they would have a modicum of privacy in Vince’s room. Vince still made sure to thoroughly block the door, because Leroy did a lot of drugs and Vince didn’t want his flatmate bursting in and spoiling his plans for Howard. Vince had figured out how to even things out between them, and he needed to do it before he lost his nerve. 

Vince let Howard take the lead, getting Vince mostly naked while Howard remained fully clothed. When Howard began probing Vince’s arse a bit while sucking him off, Vince handed him a newly purchased bottle of proper lube. Howard looked intimidated, and he cursed a bit as he misjudged how much to pour onto his fingers, but he quickly got back to business. Vince had found he definitely enjoyed a bit of pressure in that area, but it was better with the lubricant. Howard took his time, moving his finger in and out as he sucked Vince, and by the time he’d added a second finger and found Vince’s prostate, Vince was starting to see why men could enjoy being on the receiving end of a bumming. When Vince came, it was shockingly intense. He felt spacey and exhausted and his whole body was twitching a bit, but he didn’t let Howard withdraw his clever fingers.

“Keep going,” Vince whispered, keeping his eyes squeezed shut. “Get me ready for you.”

He waited for a lot of bluster from Howard, but instead he got tender kisses all over his face while Howard slowly worked in another finger. Howard listened to songs with twelve minute bass solos. Howard knew about patience. Vince was hard again by the time Howard put on a condom. Vince tried to get on his knees, but Howard asked him to stay on his back, saying, “I’d like to see your face. So I can see if you’re getting bored.”

Vince laughed, and tried to keep laughing as the nerves set in, but then Howard was kissing him and fingering him again and rubbing his own cock on Vince’s hip. Vince was certain Howard would happily get off that way and probably never mention the offered “real” sex again, and somehow that made it easier to say, “I want you to fuck me” and mean it. 

It was a lot. It was intense and strange, but Howard went slow, and Vince was plenty prepared. He was just starting to enjoy the feeling when Howard cursed and came a few moments later. Howard murmured apologies and endearments as he tried to bring Vince off with his hand, but Vince was determined to come with Howard inside of him, and the big man was more than willing to accommodate. The second time was easier, and Howard was a lot more confident. Vince looked him in the eyes and he stroked his own cock while Howard kept hitting that spot inside that made a half hour of preparation and a half a bottle of lube feel worthwhile. He said filthy things into the Northerner’s ear and ignored the mumbled, “Love you so much,” he got in return. When it was over and they were sweaty and panting and absolutely disgusting, Vince worried a bit that letting Howard fuck him might not so much have evened the score as put Vince deeper in the hole, but he was too sleepy to worry much. Instead, he set an alarm on his phone to make sure they could squeeze in another fuck before Leroy came knocking on the door.

Xxx

Howard saw Vince standing at Bollo’s cage and felt a wave of dread and déjà vu. Once again, he was living in not-quite-fear of Vince and his mercurial ways. He never knew if Vince would be clingy or vicious or a mix of the two. Howard had been hopeful that Vince’s decision to go on another date and make love in his bed rather than against a random wall had been a sign he wanted to move their relationship forward, but they seemed to have moved backwards. If Howard so much as touched Vince by accident, he’d be roughly pushed away and yelled at, but if he stood too far away, Vince would accuse him of being distant or aloof. Not that Vince would use those words, but Howard was pretty skilled at reading between the lines of Vince’s verbal attacks. 

Howard was at a loss. Any talk of romance was treated with scorn, and Vince rejected any affection unless they were actually having sex, but Howard could see there was a need for some kind of reassurance. Vince had a job, he had his own money, he had total control over his physical relationship with Howard, but he still acted as though Howard might banish him at any moment. If Howard tried to get Vince fired, he was pretty sure he’d be out on his ass, because Fossil was not ambiguous about which of them he preferred. Howard wasn’t sure why Vince was still so afraid, but a frightened animal was a dangerous animal and needed to be approached with caution.

“Are you going to get to work or just stare at my arse all day?” Vince yelled, sounding angry but with a twinkle in his eye. “I knew this would happen. Now it’s all you can think about.”

Howard was never sure how to respond to those comments. It was clear Vince attached special significance to what they’d done the night of their second date, and Howard had a feeling if he understood that part better, he might have a chance of making things right. 

That night had been amazing for Howard. He’d been frankly terrified by the idea of topping Vince. As much as Vince seemed to assume that was always his goal when they touched, Howard had not been in any rush to move things in that direction. He’d read plenty on how to do it safely and hopefully painlessly and had been experimenting on himself with some pretty pleasant results, but he had been far from sure about his ability to make the experience a good one for someone else. He’d been surprised by how easy it was with Vince. It was like when they got into one of their bits of schtick, talking nonsense but totally in sync. Vince had stayed with Howard through it all, not getting angry or snippy when Howard faltered, never sliding behind his mask of indifference. He’d been vulnerable and trusting with Howard that night; even when Howard had let the dreaded “L word” slip, Vince hadn’t gone cold. That was the part Howard couldn’t stop thinking about. The way he’d felt so close to Vince that night. He hadn’t been surprised when Vince went back to pushing him away the next day, but he was disappointed. That was more than two weeks ago, and Howard still hadn’t worked out how to defuse the tension. Howard was tempted to promise never to try and top Vince again if it would make the younger man less spikey and defensive, but he knew that wasn’t the answer. Nothing was that simple with Vince.

“I’ll have you know I am a man of refined and varied interests,” Howard responded, slipping into his man-of-the-world persona. “I was just contemplating the great works of art…”

“That means you’ve been perving at the museum again. I told you, Howard, they’ll call the cops, and you won’t survive in jail.”

“Not perving, appreciating. Boys ogle, a man appreciates.”

“So you’re appreciating my arse?”

“I’m appreciating all of you, including your arse.”

“Bender.”

“How dare you!”

Vince laughed and Howard reached out to touch his arm, but his hand was aggressively slapped away.

“I have work to do, Howard. We can mess around during lunch.”

“I wasn’t trying to…” Howard clamped his mouth shut. It wasn’t an argument worth having. Again.

“So now I’m in trouble? What else is new? If I go bend over for you in the supply shed, can I get out of another fucking lecture on how I’m wrong about everything?”

Howard felt rage building in his stomach at unfair accusations. Vince was just spewing venom, but Howard was angry and embarrassed and confused, and Vince was still yelling.

“Not going to talk to me now? I let you down again? Not being your obedient little apprentice/fuck toy? Maybe you need to teach me a lesson, maybe you should…”

Howard put his hand over Vince’s mouth, needing a moment to think, but the change in Vince was immediate and alarming. His face went pale and his eyes were wide with terror, but he didn’t pull away or make a move to defend or protect himself. Howard dropped his hand and stepped back, giving Vince room to escape, but the younger man just sagged his shoulders and stared at the ground, mumbling, “Sorry, Howard.”

“Vince, I don’t understand.”

Vince kept his eyes on the ground as he fidgeted.

“I’m sorry, Howard.”

Howard dropped onto a nearby bench and tried to make sense of anything that had just happened, but he couldn’t think properly when Vince was like this. It was like Vince’s bouts of insanity were contagious. Howard felt on edge, like he was in danger (always a possibility in the god-forsaken Zooniverse) but the only identifiable threat was the tiny young man in front of him, looking cowed and miserable. 

“Please, Howard…”

“Please what?” It was a sincere question, but Vince looked like he’d been slapped. 

Howard gently suggested that they get back to work and maybe they could take a long lunch and talk. It was as neutral and friendly as Howard could manage in his worked up state, but Vince seemed to hear some implied threat that Howard could not begin to imagine much less offer assurances against. In the end, he gave up and went back to work. Howard still had a job to do, and the animal dung wasn’t going to shovel itself.


	8. Chapter 8

Vince pounded on the door to the kiosk. It was nearly time for his “talk” with Howard, and he hadn’t been able to come up with a single idea of what to do to smooth things over. 

He nearly stumbled into Naboo when the shaman opened the door. He was vaguely aware that the size of the kiosk inside was not in alignment with the size of the outside, but the instability of the physical world was the least of his concerns.

“You need to do something. You told me that as long as my hair was amazing, I’d be okay and I’d have loads of chances with Howard, but he hasn’t even tried to fuck me again since the night I let him…”

“I did not need to hear that,” Naboo said, wrinkling his nose. “Human sex is disgusting.”

“And if that don’t mean anything to him… What else have I got, Naboo? He don’t care about hair or clothes or free drugs… He’s going to find a real girlfriend someday, and he won’t need me anymore, will he?”

Naboo took a solemn toke from the joint in his hand, and Vince watched anxiously as he coughed out a massive puff of smoke.

“Why do you assume Howard wants a ‘real girlfriend’?” Naboo asked, wiping tears from his face with his robe.

“Because he treats me like a girlfriend when we’re…” Vince searched for a word that wouldn’t make Naboo look queasy. “Having alone-times.”

Naboo rolled his eyes. “Are you 12? I still don’t understand why you think he wants someone else.”

“He’s all kissy and romantic, like he’s my boyfriend and we’re in some kind of relationship. Even if we’re just getting off in the supply shed, he’s holding me and asking if I’m comfortable, like we’re making love in a villa or chateau or wherever it is he thinks sophisticated men are supposed to get off.”

“First of all, we all need to use those supply sheds, and that is unhygienic and unprofessional.”

“And secondly?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘first of all.’ I thought there was a second part coming.”

Naboo stared over Vince’s shoulder long enough that Vince had to look behind him, but there was nothing but a tapestry of Jimi Hendrix on the wall behind him.

“There are things you need to understand,” Naboo said in a slow and measured tone. “Things that I cannot explain to you, things you are not ready to comprehend.”

“Because they’re mystical and beyond my ken? Cause I can talk to animals, you know.”

“It’s more about your seriously outdated understanding of gender roles, but I have some books I can lend you about that. The more important thing is that you need to look inside yourself and ask: what do you have to offer Howard that no one else can?”

Vince’s instinct was to scream, “Nothing. That’s the whole point,” but something about Naboo’s very presence soothed his frayed nerves. Vince closed his eyes and thought. He thought about Howard’s old-fashioned romanticism, his pomposity, his fragile ego. His inability to put his natural strength and size to any kind of advantage. He thought of Howard talking about love while fucking Vince on a mattress on a floor in a closet in a sorry little flat on the wrong side of town. He thought of Howard listening to jazz on purpose and liking it. 

He thought of Howard being wounded by silly jokes from Vince, but patiently letting the words slide off his back when Vince lashed out with real anger. His tiny eyes seeing through Vince’s defensive offensive moves with unnerving accuracy.

He thought of Howard avoiding the glowing lights, the tempting portals, and the otherworldly creatures that wandered the zoo. Howard being scared of magic, terrified of monsters. Howard running away from the zombie Fossil had accidentally summoned while trying to place an order for Indian takeaway. (No one was sure if Fossil had accidentally made a series of sounds that served as a summoning spell, or if the zombie had simply been stirred by the sheer volume of Fossil’s order.) Howard had been terrorized by the useless zombie that had gone stumbling about, walking into walls, but he’d had no fear of the American yelling, “Do my bidding, get me a coffee and put it in a cup this time!” in the zombie’s ear. He hid his shiny coins from trolls and ogres, but he asked Vince to hold his wallet while he swam with the porpoises. 

Howard was afraid of all the wrong monsters. 

Maybe it was Naboo’s soothing energy, or the copious amounts of weed that Vince was breathing in just being near the shaman, but Vince began to see the world a little differently. He could see a way that maybe he could fit into Howard’s world, or at least into Howard’s world at the zoo. A plan began to form. In truth, it was a less a plan than an outfit change and a vague idea, but it was better than waiting to get chucked.

Xxx

Howard clutched a bag of Chinese takeaway (vegetable lo-mein, minimal vegetables – a clear peace offering if ever there was one) in a sweaty hand as he searched the zoo for Vince. He still wasn’t sure what he’d done to upset Vince so badly, but he was eager to get back to some semblance of normality. The zoo seemed more awful than usual without Vince’s endless prattle about pop music and territorial imperatives. Howard didn’t want to imagine being at the zoo without Vince to distract him from… everything else in the zoo. Even a spikey Vince was better than no Vince. 

Howard would welcome some yelling from Vince--anything other than the defeated look Vince had been wearing that morning. Howard knew a thing or two about de-escalation, but anyone could look at the lethargic zoo animals and see Howard knew nothing about offering hope or excitement. Vince was the upper, Howard was the downer, and at their best, they balanced each other out.

When Vince wasn’t in any of the expected spots, Howard forced himself to go to Bollo’s cage and look the gorilla in the eye.

“Have you seen Vince around?” he asked the noble animal.

Bollo grunted and pointed towards the glowing blue light behind the ocelot pit, near the arachnid atrium. Howard took a deep breath and imagined himself to be a man of action. He tried to imagine himself as Tommy, fearlessly chasing adventure and excitement.

Before disappearing into the Jungle Room and being devoured by ocelots.

“Thanks, Bollo.”

Howard did not hear Bollo say, “Bout time, ballbag.” That would be a pretty unlikely thing for a gorilla to say. 

Just a few steps beyond the Arachnid Atrium, Howard found himself deep in the woods, the Zooniverse suddenly in the distance, looking dull and gray. He found Vince standing by a tree with a door, talking to a man with the legs of a ram. Ceruvial Brooks. Howard wanted to turn around and leave, but Vince was talking about his “band” and moving towards the door.

“If you come in, you can never leave,” Ceruvial warned, but Vince simply shrugged and moved toward the door, saying he didn’t have much on anyway. 

Howard put down the Chinese food and yelled, “Leave him! It’s me that you want!”

Like a man of action.


	9. Chapter 9

The Chinese food was somewhere out there in the forest, surely getting cold, possibly being nibbled by woodland creatures, and Howard was dressed in white, holding a bouquet of flowers. Again. For the first time in a year, he allowed himself to properly miss Tommy, and the world began to blur.

“Why are you crying, my child? This is a joyous occasion, surely! We are to be married on… Well, in about twenty minutes, if traffic cooperates. The vicar said he needs to stop off for some petrol…”

Howard tuned out the sound of Ceruvial Brooks and his endless rambling, and thought about the last time he’d been in this part of the zoo. He’d learned to avoid everything that reminded him of those days with Tommy, when the Zooniverse had seemed like a magical playground rather than a terrifying den of monsters. Nothing had been the same after Tommy had disappeared. Howard had felt invincible at Tommy’s side, boosted by the older man’s endless and baseless confidence. Without his mentor, Howard was just a scared kid too embarrassed to go slinking back to his parents after making his dramatic exit from Leeds. 

And now he was going to be the scared bride of a blithering mad creature who has half ram, half idiot, and he hadn’t even managed to save Vince. Vince had simply waved at Howard and gone inside the tree. It was all for nothing.

Ceruvial did not seem to recall the last time he’d tried to force Howard to give his “tiny little… actually, that’s quite large. And hairy!” hand in marriage. Ceruvial seemed to go through his rambling rants like an animatronic that had only been given a set number of responses. Married on the morrow, one-way door, “you can go in but you can never leave,” a creepy song, complaining about his ram’s legs… Howard would go mad before he worked out a way to free Vince. He felt halfway there already, and Ceruvial had only sung his song once. He’d gotten through it three times before Tommy had saved Howard the first time around. 

That was over a year ago, and Howard had been so much younger then.

“Stop right there! Un-hand that fair… darkish… fella!”

Despite the faltering speech, Howard had to acknowledge that the way Vince kicked open the door and struck a heroic pose worked in the absurd environment. Vince was like Tommy; he belonged in the zoo. Howard was mildly curious as to where Vince had gotten the pink, ruffled shirt, but it might well have been what he’d been wearing under his zoo jacket. Vince was fond of pointing out that Howard had no eye for fashion.

Although even Howard could tell his wedding gown was a taffeta disaster. Miss Havisham would have called the gown outdated and ratty.

“You can’t come back out the door! It’s not… that isn’t how it works. It’s a one way system, as I explained. Once you go inside, you can never leave,” Ceruvial whined, stomping his hooved feet. “We’ve been through this…”

“I’m here to save my… my Howard. Come here, my love!”

Howard allowed himself to be pulled to Vince’s side, which was only a few feet further away from Ceruvial than where he’d been standing before, but Howard felt the hopelessness fall away. He could just run away. Why had he felt so trapped a moment before? He gripped Vince’s waist, feeling both anchored and buoyed by Vince’s absolute confidence. Vince put his hand protectively on Howard’s back, while his other hand slid up the ruffled bodice of the gown.

“Don’t touch me,” Howard snapped as Vince groped his nonexistent breasts. “Don’t ever touch me.”

But he didn’t dare let Vince go. He was aware the term “hanging on for dear life” might not be over-dramatic in this instance. Vince was his lifeline.

“This lovely creature is mine,” Vince declared, “and I intend to take him back to the world of men, where we will go to a chippy shop, cause I am starving and I just saw a deer running off with our takeaway.”

Howard waited for someone to put up a fight, but the assorted creatures seemed taken aback by Vince’s performance, and they simply stared and whispered “peas and carrots” while Vince led Howard by the hand towards the Zooniverse. Howard stumbled along, trying not to trip on his dress as Vince pulled him back towards the zoo proper – back to what could loosely be called the real world. When he heard Ceruvial say, “Wait a moment. That isn’t how any of this works,” Howard hiked up his dress around his waist and began to run.

Xxx

Vince tucked a chair under the door handle for safety, but it seemed like their pursuers had given up the chase. Howard collapsed on the Keeper Hut sofa, panting and red-faced and laughing so hard there were tears on his face. Not like the tears Vince had witnessed while waiting to make a dramatic entrance. He never wanted to see Howard look that sad or lost again. Someday, he would ask what had made Howard so upset – he’d seemed pretty resigned to the forcible marriage – but that could wait for another day.

“Here we are, my beautiful bride,” Vince said in his best leading man voice. He was enjoying his role as the hero. He’d spent about an hour trapped in a cell with a murderer before he’d realized he could just kick open the cell door. Dramatics were far more important in the magic world than physics. 

Howard laughed and wiped his face with his oddly oversized gown. Vince wondered who it had been made for, if it hung long and loose on Howard. But that was likely another story for another time.

“Who are you?” Howard asked once he had breath enough to form words.

“I’m Vince Noir, Rock’n’Roll star. I’m in a band. I can talk to animals.”

Vince had realized something important while in a magical tree in the forest inside a zoo in Shoreditch: reality was overrated. Vince didn’t need to be some loser who hadn’t finished school. He could be anyone. Anyone at all.

Vince ran his hand through Howard’s hair and smiled seductively. Howard looked away, his cheeks turning pink. 

“I’m a gifted child. I’m the prince of Camden. I was raised in the jungle by Bryan Ferry.”

Vince trailed his hand down Howard’s chest, leaning over his seated companion and watching the flush spread from Howard’s face to his chest, as Howard’s breathing became more shallow. Being a damsel in distress suited Howard. Vince moved in so his lips hovered above Howard’s, not quite kissing him as he promised, “I’m the man who can save you from monsters.”

Howard reached up for a kiss, his lips just barely brushing against Vince’s. A chaste first kiss between a hero and his fair maid. His lanky, mustachioed maid. Vince crawled on top of Howard, kissing him gently, taking his time. Letting Howard pull him closer, letting Howard be the one to ask for more.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m some kind of tart,” Howard whispered as he spread his legs a bit wider, pulling Vince close. “Going from nearly marrying one man… one man-like thing… to this.”

Vince ground his hips into Howard, making him hiss. “Of course not. This is some fairytale romance right here. You can’t deny fate.”

Howard put his hand on Vince’s arse, holding him still for a moment.

“Because you’d be my first,” Howard said in a low and husky tone that Vince had never heard before. 

Vince smiled lasciviously before his brain caught up with the conversation and what Howard was offering. Uncertainty and fear tickled at the back of his brain. This was not how things were meant to work for Howard Moon and Vince…

Vince Noir. He was Vince Noir now. This could be how things worked for Vince Noir.


	10. Chapter 10

It worked for a bit. Howard was attacked, trapped, or kidnapped on a regular basis, and Vince came to the rescue. It was a dynamic that worked. Howard had no ability to manipulate anything--he couldn’t even manage his own hair--but he was amazing at being a damsel in varying levels of distress, from begging for his life to being mildly inconvenienced and annoyed. All that really mattered was the rescue and the amazing sex that followed.

Vince moved out of his closet and into Howard’s tiny room, and they played at being boyfriends. They went on dates, they “made love,” they shared expenses. It was all perfectly normal and nice, and Vince tried very hard not to ruin it. He tried not to fly off the handle every time someone gave them a sideways look, or every time Howard spoke to an attractive woman. He tried to act like a person and not like a deranged animal that Howard had stuffed into a person-suit. 

But Howard was brittle and paranoid and easier to read than Cheekbone magazine. There were things that couldn’t be unsaid, and Vince knew he’d gone too far. Again. They’d had a good six months together--more, if you counted the Before time, but Vince didn’t. That time wasn’t supposed to exist. 

Now they were alone together in the woods. Not a trace of monsters to be seen, at least not the kind that worried Howard. Their fight had ostensibly been about how long it took Vince to come to Howard’s rescue, but really it was about the ways Vince was failing to be what Howard needed and Howard’s steadfast denial of that fact. The fight had gotten ugly, too ugly, and it was a long walk back to the zoo.

“What do we do now?” Howard asked. His voice was wrecked from yelling, and he looked devastated. Vince was supposed to be his protector. That was the dynamic that worked, but he ended up hurting Howard more than anyone else could. Howard was too delicate; Vince was too hard. 

Vince startled at the sound of breaking branches, but then he smelled the familiar scent of faraway lands and high quality weed.

“Naboolio, please. You must have some kind of potion or magic spell…” Vince cast a glance in Howard’s direction. “You said there were different chances. I fucked up the first time, and I fucked up this time…”

“Vince?”

Vince ignored the question in Howard’s tone. “There has to be a way to make this okay. Please. Help me.”

Naboo looked from Vince to Howard and then stared off into the woods. They were near the magic tree, but there was no Ceruvial. No magic in the air. Vince had taken care of all that.

“Of course,” Naboo said. “I’ll cast a spell, and you’ll forget all about what happened here and start all over again.”

Howard rolled his eyes, “That isn’t how adults work through relationship issues.”

“Please, Howard,” Vince begged. “It worked before.”

“But that wasn’t magic. That was…” Howard trailed off and looked thoughtful. Howard was a know-it-all, but in matters of magic and the otherworldly, he generally deferred to Vince’s expertise. 

Vince looked at his love line, at all the many ways he was going to try to love Howard and then fuck it all up. 

“I can be better,” Vince promised. “Please don’t give up on me, Howard. Not yet.”

Howard took Vince’s hands. There was no hatred in his eyes, just sadness. Howard was wounded by every callous or thoughtless word to come out of Vince’s mouth, but he never seemed to see the worst or the most damaged parts of Vince. Vince would never find another person with eyes so tiny that they couldn’t see the true, broken mess that made up Vince’s core.

“Use your magic, Naboo,” Howard said in a commanding tone. “Let’s begin again.”

Vince shook out his limbs, never letting go of Howard’s hands, and tried to get into the proper mindset. This time, he’d be sweeter, softer--someone who could be held without having to constantly plan his escape route. 

He’d be more innocent, like Howard. Someone who could look up to Howard without always worrying that Howard was looking down on him. He tried to fill his mind with the times that things had actually been good between them, when they were able to laugh and be at ease, cocooned in their own reality.

It would have felt pointless and stupid if Vince couldn’t see that Howard doing the same thing. The Northerner was raising and lowering his eyebrows, trying to erase those perpetual worry lines, widening his eyes and trying to look straight at Vince without letting his eyes dart about, trying to stand tall and look confident. Vince tried to let every bit of love and affection he felt for the big, hopeless idiot show in his face, and he knew he was succeeding, because Howard was giving him one of those soft, dewy-eyed looks he usually wore after an especially intense fuck. 

After making love. Vince and Howard made love.

Naboo spoke his magic words. Some of it sounded familiar, and Vince was pretty sure there was a bit of pig latin in there, but it worked. Vince felt the difference in the air, felt the tension and anger fall out of his body. When he opened his eyes, Howard was looking at him with his natural wariness.

“So you’re supposed to be my new apprentice, Vince Noir?”

Vince’s promise to be better had belonged to another man who no longer existed, so he gave a cheeky grin and said, “Get stuffed. You’re meant to be my apprentice.” Howard closed his eyes, preparing for a pompous speech, but Vince cut him off with a kiss on the nose. Howard was red and sputtering, but there was no time to worry about establishing boundaries or setting limits. 

“You there, pretty lady! Not you, the other one. The tall lady. I like my women tall…” 

Ceruvial Brooks was already on the hunt for a bride. 

Vince would come to his rescue, assuaging Howard’s fears and soothing his ego, showering him with affection and attention. 

But none of that could happen if Howard wasn’t first abducted by a monster.

“You can have her if you give me that jacket,” Vince offered. “Is that real velvet?”


End file.
